


some consequence yet hanging in the stars

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ignoring Even Basic And Innocuous Details About Canon Because This Is My Garbage Fire And I Said So, M/M, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Send Me To Ninth Grade English Jail You're Not My Real Dad, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Yeah It's An R+J Quote Sue Me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-06-17 14:19:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15463281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "The universe made a mistake," Lance says."It's the universe, Lance, it doesn't make mistakes."Lance shakes his head. "The universe made a mistake."(Lance has always held out hope his soulmark wasn't what everyone thought it was. Maybe it was a code, or a dead language, or the product of some really, really terrible handwriting.Turns out it was in Galran.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> when i grow up i'm going to live with wolves until they accept me as their own and teach me their ways and maybe then and finally then will i stop goddamn overthinking shit

Lance is six, and he hates thinking about his soulmark, so naturally he thinks about it pretty much all the time.

 

That in itself, Lance knows, is normal. Every kid obsesses about their soulmark, pores over the name on their wrist, studies the loops and swirls of their soulmate's signature until their handwriting is ingrained in their mind. Everyone Lance knows was thinking about their soulmarks pretty much all the time.

 

Because why wouldn’t they? The idea of soulmates is like a fairytale come to life to them, the one fantasy their parents told them that turned out to be true. Soulmarks are a symbol of hope to a child with no clue about their future, a borderline divine manifestation of evidence that no matter what lay ahead, there was someone out there, waiting for you, fated to love you no matter what. 

 

Lance has known his soulmark wasn’t the same beacon of faith as everyone else’s was his whole life; the fact was as glaring and blatant as the five silvery characters etched on his wrist. His family never treated him differently, never looked at his soulmark in revulsion or fear. They never even made him hide it with bracelets or wristbands like other kids wore. 

 

“It’s who you are. Never be ashamed of who you are,” his father had said simply when Lance asked why. “Now get down from the fence, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

 

But he learned of his bad omen anyway, through the stares and hushed whispers and severity of others. It was one of the only things he was aware of ever since he was old enough to be aware of things:  _ my name is Lance McClain, and my soulmark is a curse _ . 

 

-

 

He had always known about it, but the fact had never really seemed real for a long time; it haunted the edges of its life as an unspoken truth, nothing more. The first time he had cried about it was after his first day of kindergarten, when the teacher had taken one glance at his wrist and walked out of the classroom without a word.  

 

Lance instantly felt his face heat as the classroom swelled with confused discussion, murmured questions and rumors spreading through the room like a drop of ink dissipating in water. The longer the kids talked, the more Lance felt as if the noise was a physical presence in the room, weighing down on his shoulders until he was crushed under its oppressive shroud.

 

It was finally happening, he’d realized. The reckoning he was always promised. He was waiting for a verdict, and no horror was beyond imagining. 

 

His paranoia grew until the kid behind him tapped him on the shoulder and Lance flinched away from the touch like a startled rabbit. 

 

“Why don’t you cover your mark?” The boy asked accusingly, like he was interrogating him for a crime.

 

“It’s…it’s a part–“ Lance said nervously. “It’s a part of me."

 

The boy pursed his lips and crossed his arms with a pout. “Well, your mark is weird. You shouldn’t be happy about it."

 

“I don’t understand what’s wrong with me,” Lance responded helplessly.

 

“Your soulmark is messed up,” a girl piped up two chairs down. “Your tattoo’s all junk. It’s the wrong color, and it doesn’t make any sense, it’s gibberish. And scary gibberish, at that."

 

Suddenly, Lance noticed the whole class was fixated on their conversation, murmuring in agreement with her. He darted his eyes around the room looking for some refuge from their piercing stares, but it was no use. There was nowhere to turn to, nowhere to escape; he was surrounded by hostility on all sides. 

 

“Or maybe it’s an alien name,” a kid in the back of the room sniggered. “Maybe aliens are gonna come to Earth and Lance is gonna marry one of them.”

 

“Gross!” The boy behind him shouted as the class erupted in revulsion and laughter and Lance slid down in his seat. “You and one of those green bug-eyed things are–“

 

“I’m not–my soulmate’s not going to be like that,” Lance said breathlessly.

 

“You’re right. It could be even worse than that.” He leered at Lance. “Who knows just how horrible you’ll turn out to be?”

 

The sound of a chair scraping again the ground echoes through the class.

 

“I wanna see it,” someone said.

 

“Yeah, I want to look!” Another voice piped up. 

 

The boy to Lance’s right grabbed Lance’s wrist. “It’s really creepy.”

 

“Don’t–” Lance tried to pull away from him, but his grip only tightened, and the class leapt out of their seats and crowded around them, noisily straining to get a better look.

 

The way everyone was looking at him–with fear, arrogance, delighted disgust–sent his thoughts skittering away from him as if they were escaping from a wildfire. Lance shifted in his seat, feeling his breath get shorter and shorter as their malice crowded out the oxygen in the room. His hands, gripping the edge of his chair desperately, were shaking. He had the distinct sensation that he was being circled, sized up and surrounded in preparation for an attack.

 

“It doesn’t matter how bad it is, you’ll love it anyway. It says so right here.” A boy grinned, running a finger across the foreign script inscribed just above Lance’s rapidly beating pulse. “You know, maybe you’re an alien too. Maybe that’s why you'll love your alien soulmate. After all, you’re clearly not a regular human like the rest of us."

 

“Maybe you and your soulmate are gonna try to take over Earth and we’ll have to shoot you down to stop the invasion.” A student leaned over Lance’s desk and mimed a gunshot with his thumb and index finger. 

 

“Maybe it’d be best to take you out now before it’s too late,” someone suggested, snickering.

 

Someone else sneered. “To save the planet. For the good of the universe. What does everyone think?”

 

A chorus of voices erupted around the room.

 

_ “It’s just like in the movies.” _

 

_ “We’d be heroes. Legendary defenders.” _

 

_ “I always wanted to defeat an alien.” _

 

_ “Do you think he can be killed like a human?” _

 

“ _ Shhh _ ,” a girl hissed, and for a moment Lance thought he’d gained an ally until he noticed she was gesturing towards the door, where a hushed argument could just barely be heard.

 

“ _ It’s not right to just run out on the kids, no matter who’s– _ “ 

 

“ _ You haven’t seen his mark _ .” Their teacher’s voice filtered into the room. “ _ You have no idea how wrong it is. There’s something horrible going on with that child in there _ ."

 

Lance’s heart ticked frantically, pounding at the rate of gunfire, but even as his heartbeat thundered in his ears, Lance, frozen in a state of embarrassment and fear, heard every word with almost unnatural clarity. 

 

“ _ Don’t be ridiculous, there’s no way it could be that _ –"

 

“ _ That tattoo was not normal _ ,” the teacher went on, tone grave. " _ Nothing good could come of a soulmark like that. I’d bet my life on this, that boy is soulbound to the Devil. _ "

 

Lance was standing up and running out of the classroom before he could even think to do it.

 

As his classmates spent the rest of the day learning arithmetic and the alphabet, Lance silently allowed the school nurse to put bandaids over the bloody scratches around his soulmark, ignoring her pursed lips and concerned expression with quiet determination.

 

“You’re not going to be able to claw it off, you know,” the nurse said casually, dabbing another swab of disinfectant on his wrist. “People have done studies, tried replacing tissue and editing genes, but it never goes away. It's imprinted on you at a cellular level. The will of the stars is clustered in your DNA."

 

Lance said nothing, settling his gaze downward, towards his wrist. Covered in bandaids, his soulmark was almost completely invisible, only the barest hint of blood and silver visible around the edges. 

 

“The principal has called your parents," she went on. “They’ll talk things out. You’ll probably be moved to a different class, so you don’t ever have to worry about going back there again.”

 

She leaned forward. “What that teacher did was awful, child, don’t blame yourself for it.”

 

Lance didn’t respond, couldn’t allow himself to respond. If he let himself listen to her, if he even let himself look her in the eye, he would start crying and never ever stop, he would completely shatter under the weight of what he’d learned. 

 

So once again, he said nothing, turning away from her and fixing his eyes over the ground. The nurse sighed stuck on the last bandage, smoothing out the ends with her thumbs.

 

“There you go,” she told him with a half-hearted flourish. “Luckily, you didn’t scratch very deep. You can take those band-aids off by the end of the day.”

 

Lance nodded mechanically and walked out of the health office without a second glance at her.

 

He did not take off the band-aids by the end of the day, or the day after that, or the day after that. On the fourth day, he has a leather band wrapped tightly around his wrist, and he vows to never even think about his soulmark again. 

 

-

 

And yet, of course, he would think about it repeatedly, let one refrain echo through his mind over and over in the years and years to come:  _ my name is Lance McClain, and my soulmark is a curse _ .

 

-

 

Hunk is in Lance’s class four years later, and Lance is determined to befriend this angel that has descended in his midst.

 

Point one in his favor: Hunk had just moved into the neighborhood, meaning he wasn’t around for the years in which Lance had been sad and quiet and generally unable to pretend everything was okay the way he had learned to master. Everyone else knew that Lance was an outcast loser pretending to be a normal person, but there was still a chance with Hunk that for once Lance’s pretending could actually work. 

 

Point two: he was truly and genuinely the coolest kid in their grade, even if no one else noticed it. In class, he spoke low and stuttered constantly, but when asked a question, he always managed to get the right answer, and when he gave presentations, he always snuck a pun somewhere into his speech. Lance still remembers the looks he got when he laughed himself to the point of tears over “torque de force” during Hunk’s physics report. (That was a plus to being at social rock bottom, he supposed; even a seemingly random laughing fit couldn’t sink his status any lower than it already was.) Sometimes Hunk would get so swept up with a book that he’d read it and take notes in the margins all while walking, and Lance would occasionally get glimpses of what Hunk was drawing while he hurried past, intricate designs for machines that Lance couldn’t possibly fathom the purpose of. And Hunk was good in a way that Lance could never imagine himself to be, not in a million years. Unfailingly, Hunk was the person who would loan someone a pencil, or help them with a math problem, or offer to split his lunch. Lance knew that kindness was wasted on the people in their school, but he still admired it, that persistent will to be benevolent for no reward.

 

Point three: Hunk was at about the same social standing as Lance, and for almost the same reason. Lance had no idea why he didn’t cover it, the blank skin on his wrist, why he seemed completely oblivious to the looks he got when he wore short sleeves or rose his hand in class. Nobody would acknowledge his presence, but Hunk didn’t even seem like he wanted them to. He was completely, miraculously unbothered both by the fact that he had no soulmate and the judgment that came with it. 

 

Lance had spent a lot of time awake at night wondering what it would be like to have no soulmate, to wake up one day and see his soulmark had disappeared or start a new life where he never had one at all. He thinks as much as he hated his mark, he would rather have it than nothing. It meant there would always be something terrifying was waiting out there for him, but at least there was something out there. He has no idea how he’d feel if one day he looked out into the universe and knew no one was looking back.

 

So Hunk had no soulmate. Lance had a bad soulmate. They were as perfect for each other as two non-soulmates could be. Lance was determined to become his best friend. He just needed to figure out how.

 

“Hey!” he shouted at him one day, running up to a very confused Hunk during recess, eyes alight with excitement. “I want to be your best friend. What’re your top three favorite dinosaurs?"

 

Hunk turned to him apprehensively, expression guarded.

 

“Aren’t you that kid with the alien mark?” He said nervously.

 

Lance stopped. His smile faded into a wince.

 

“Well, it might–might not be an alien.” He shuffled his feet. “It could be code, or a foreign language, or something. Something like that.”

 

“Are you sure? Because it would–“ Hunk swallows. “Explain your social alienation.”

 

Lance froze. Slowly, he raised his head and fixed Hunk with a stare, the intensity of which he would never again achieve even in the heat of a battle for the fate of the universe. 

 

“Hunk. That was awful,” he said gravely, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You are the greatest person I have ever met.”

 

-

 

The first time Hunk and Lance have a sleepover together (the first sleepover in both their lives), they decide to do it at Hunk’s house so Lance’s siblings can’t get in the way.

 

“This is a Hunk and Lance night only,” Lance declared, unfurling his sleeping bag with a flourish on Hunk’s carpet. “No girls allowed. No other boys allowed. No other various peoples, alien or otherwise, allowed. This is Very Best Friends Only Night." 

 

They ran through the list of typical sleepover activities quickly–Hunk printed out a checklist from the Internet, but most of them required a group of three or more to be fun, so they skipped through a lot of them. Four and a half bags of cookie dough and seven rounds of Twenty Questions later, they’ve reached the end of the list ahead of schedule, and they decide to go to sleep two hours early. 

 

Hunk walked over to the light switch as Lance squirmed around on the ground, trying to get comfortable in his sleeping bag.

 

“Okay, get ready for this,” Hunk said, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I’ve been waiting to show you this all night.”

 

Lance nodded, and Hunk flipped off the lights.

 

“Hey!” Lance protested. “How are you gonna show me something if I can’t–"

 

His words catch in his throat as he looks up, where a faint glow was emanating from the ceiling. Stuck to Hunk’s ceiling were dozens of shining stars, coated in glow-in-the-dark paint–a mini galaxy splashed across the plaster above their heads. With no other light or sound in the room, Lance felt their grandeur all the more strongly, as if the universe outside the bounds of Hunk’s room suddenly ceased to exist.

 

“That’s so  _ cool _ ,” Lance breathed, searching for constellations in awestruck wonder. “I love space.”

 

“Me too.” Hunk climbed under his covers and looked up with a pleased smile. “I’m gonna be an engineer one day and go there.”

 

Lance’s face crumpled. “I’m not smart enough to be the kind of person they send into space.”

 

“Don’t say that,” Hunk assured him. “If anything, you have to go to space. How else are you going to meet your soulmate?”

 

Lance bolted upward. “I have a human soulmate.”

 

“Well, you don’t know that." Hunk winced. “I think it would actually be really cool if–“

 

“I have a human soulmate,” Lance repeated insistently. “I’m not a freak.”

 

“Of course not,” Hunk said, concerned. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you."

 

Lance groaned and flopped back down to the ground, thankful to the dark that Hunk couldn’t see his face. The stars above no longer felt magical, but they’re still a comfort, somehow.

 

“It’s not that I’m embarrassed about who I am,” Lance said eventually. “I’m embarrassed of who my soulmate is.”

 

“But you and your soulmate are one and the same. You’re–”

 

“–two parts of the same heart, I know, everyone’s always saying that,” Lance rolled his eyes. “But I don’t want to be a heart part with some weirdo who doesn’t know how to write. Or–someone even worse, who–”

 

“You know how my moms got married?”

 

Lance scrunched up his face in confusion and rolled over to look at Hunk. “What?”

 

“My moms used to be named Sima and Elena,” Hunk went on, staring meditatively at the ceiling. “And they loved each other, and Mama had ‘Sima’ on her wrist, but Momma had ‘Francine’. Mama thought she was a lost half.”

 

Lance shuddered. It was a rare phenomenon, to be soulmate to someone who was soulmate to someone else, but it was feared more than death by almost everyone. Soulmates were supposed to be a promise that someone out in the world would complete you, and to one day find out you were nothing more than a satellite to the one person who was supposed to love you the most–Lance couldn’t imagine how Hunk’s mom must’ve felt, feeling that fundamentally alone and unwanted and broken.  

 

“Momma’s family didn’t want them to get married, wanted her to wait for Francine. Everyone was fighting with everyone, no one was happy,” Hunk continued. “My parents didn’t know what to do. They loved each other. They wanted to be together, and they knew they–”

 

“But they weren’t soulmates,” Lance interrupted softly. “They’d never be able to truly love each other.”

 

“Here’s the thing, though.” Hunk’s voice lowered, like he didn’t want anyone but Lance to hear. “Mama couldn’t take it anymore. She decided the whole situation was stupid. So she changed her name to Francine. Marched through all the legal steps and got all the paperwork. And when she got the certificate, the first time she signed her name as Francine instead of Elena, it looked just like Momma’s soulmark.”

 

“ _ What _ .” Lance rolled over to look at Hunk in shock. “But–but then why–“

 

“I don’t know,” Hunk shrugged. “Mama says she’s thought about it for years, but she can’t think of a single reason. She does think it’s kind of funny that she spent so much time being jealous of herself, though.”

 

“I don’t understand. I don’t… _ why _ ?”

 

“I’m just saying, fate is funny sometimes.” Hunk said. "Sometimes you get the name of a dead person, or a bad person, or no person. But that doesn’t doom you. My moms always say don’t try finding a soulmate to make you happy, find someone who makes you happy instead, because that’s who your soulmate will be.”

 

Hunk yawns and rolls onto his side, sleep finally getting the better of him. 

 

“Don’t worry about your soulmate. They’ll be alright,” Hunk mumbles. “A soulmate is someone who makes you happy. Your alien’ll make you happy, because if they didn’t, they couldn’t be your soulmate.”

 

Hunk went silent after that; judging by the heaviness of his breath, Lance guessed that he was finally asleep. 

 

Lance, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep. Instead he laid awake the whole time, staring at those stars on the ceiling, waiting for the mental shift that would resolve them into constellations. It never comes, but Lance felt as if he was close, as if everything could’ve align in a moment of quiet, perfect clarity if only he’d squinted.

 

-

 

His soulmark didn’t give him much trouble anymore by the time he started attending the Galaxy Garrison, now that he knew better to keep it covered and the only person at the Garrison who knew what it was was Hunk. Only a few people from their old school had applied, but no one but Hunk and Lance had gotten in.

 

(“Think about it,” Hunk had said to Lance the day they received their acceptance letters, lying on his bed and looking up at his ceiling. “We did it. We both  _ did it. _ ”

 

Lance had laughed, overwhelming joy bubbling up in his stomach, and thrown his hands upward, gesturing at the stars. 

 

“We’re going out there someday,” he said, smiling like nothing could ever go wrong again. “We’re gonna change the universe.”)

 

People at the Garrison weren’t exactly friendly; most people met their soulmates as teenagers, so anyone doing anything less than introducing themselves soulmark-first-name-second was seen as a freak. Lance only knew two kids other than himself and Hunk who weren’t open about their soulmate, Pidge and–one other, completely unimportant person who Lance barely even paid attention to. But even so, a covered soulmark was far more socially acceptable than whatever Lance’s soulmark was, so people mostly left him alone, a few glances and raised eyebrows excepted. 

 

Still, Pidge’s reaction catches him completely, completely off-guard.

 

“Oh my God,” Pidge whispered, staring at Lance’s soulmark with widened eyes. “Aliens aliens aliens aliens aliens  _ aliens _ .”

 

Lance laughed nervously and looked around the hallway to see if anyone was paying attention to their conversation. Luckily, the few people milling around didn’t seem to be listening. “Well, not necessarily, but. Yeah.”

 

Lance never thought he’d meet someone actually excited about his soulmark the way Pidge was. And even if he’d conceived that as a possibility, he never thought that person would be Pidge, who, despite being his and Hunk’s teammate, had barely ever had a conversation with them outside of class except to tell them they didn’t want to have a conversation with them. Yet, for some reason, after weeks of being distant, one day they suddenly walked up to Lance in the hallway and asked–demanded, basically–to see his soulmark. Lance relented, knowing Pidge well enough to know they wouldn’t be mean about it, but he didn’t expect them to be absolutely  _ thrilled _ about it.

 

“Aliens,” Pidge was still saying, stunned, like they’d forgotten how to say anything else. “Aliens, aliens aliens aliens, aliens, aliens.”

 

“Possibly,” Lance corrected awkwardly, hastily put his leather bracelet back on.

 

“Aliens,” Pidge repeated, as if not hearing him.

 

“Well–”

 

“How did you figure out about his soulmark?” Hunk cut in. 

 

“Oh, some dude was asking about it,” Pidge said detachedly, still not shaken from their reverie. “Said when you write your bracelet slips off enough that you can see your soulmark.”

 

Lance shoved his hands in his pockets almost on instinct, eyes widening in panic. “It does?” 

 

“Who was this person?” Hunk asked, eyes narrowed. 

 

“And did they tell anyone else about–”

 

“God, who cares? There’s evidence of extraterrestrial life  _ tattooed on your body _ .” Pidge grinned and looked up at Lance. “You know what this means?”

 

Their expression was ferocious and delighted and determined in a way that made Lance very glad they were on his side. 

 

“Uh, no?” Lance wagered. 

 

“It means,” they declared, “that I was  _ fucking _ right. They’re out there.”

 

They pushed back their sleeve to display their soulmark, black, slanted letters spelling out  _ Matt. _

 

“He’s my brother,” Pidge explained. 

 

“Wait.” Lance gagged. “Your  _ brother _ is–”

 

Pidge rolled their eyes. “Familial soulmates exist, you know. Plenty of people are soulmates with the siblings or uncles or grandmas, especially people who don’t experience romantic attraction, and even those who do often find contentment in their lives regardless without needing a romantic relationship to fulfill them.”

 

The way they rattled the sentence off made Lance think that this wasn’t the first time Pidge was saying it. Either they had a pre-prepared response, or they’d had to deal with the same kind of bullshit so often that their answer had become almost instinct. He winced. Lance never thought he’d be on the other end of a “giving someone shit for their soulmark” situation.

 

“Look, it doesn’t matter,” Pidge said with a wave of their hand. “If you’re really going to meet aliens someday, that means we must have a shared destiny, because I’m pretty sure I’m going meet aliens someday too. We’re bonded now.”

 

Lance took a moment to consider the irony of his soulmark bonding him to someone who wasn’t his soulmate. 

 

“What do you mean you’re going to meet aliens someday?” Hunk asked.

 

“Well.” The excitement suddenly drained out of Pidge’s face, like they were suddenly remembering the reasons why they’d never had a conversation with Hunk and Lance before. “It’s a long story. But my brother and my dad are–missing. They’ve been missing for a while, and um– _ fuck. _ ”

 

“Watch your profanity,” Lance mumbled, years of shepherding younger cousins making the response almost instinctive. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to tell us if you don’t feel–”

 

“No, not that. Just, heads up, since you guys were curious about who told me.” Pidge gestured at someone behind Lance with a nod of their head. “That’s the dude over there.”

 

“Wait, really?” Lance whipped around and followed Pidge’s gaze to see–

 

“ _ Holy goddamn Jesus motherfucking Christ in hell _ ,” Lance hissed.

 

Keith, wandering aimlessly through the corridor, didn’t seem to hear them, bless his stupid cool guy heart. Apparently he was so above it all that he also had no idea what was ever going on around him.

 

“What the fuck is  _ Keith Kogane _ doing investigating my soulmark?” Lance whispered anyway, as if whispering in a public hallway wasn’t a million times more suspicious and likely to draw attention than talking like a normal person.

 

“Maybe because, I don’t know, he saw it was _ alien lettering _ ,” Pidge whispered back, drawn into the illusion as well through the sheer terror in Lance’s voice. 

 

“Yeah, but–” Lance shut up as Keith suddenly passed them without so much as a glance (walking maybe a little too fast to be casual, Lance wonders, immediately consumed with paranoia). 

 

Lance cast a glance at Keith’s wrist as casually as possible as he passed by. It’s only fair he should want to know, Lance tells himself, considering Keith was so interested in his. Keith’s fingerless gloves (goddamn  _ fingerless gloves _ ) were just long enough to cover his soulmark, and they weren’t as faulty as Lance’s bracelet apparently was. 

 

Keith exited and Lance glared in the direction he left from.  _ Fucking Keith _ , he thinks bitterly.

 

“What was that all about?” Pidge said after Keith was gone.

 

“Nothing,” Lance shot back. “I don’t care about him.”

 

Lance absolutely hated him. 

 

How could he not, with his effortless piloting and condescending attitude and his stupid fucking hair? Keith was the kind of person who could be instantly noticed the second he walked into a room, hold someone’s attention even if all he did was glower in the corner without saying a word. Even Lance couldn’t help but look over in his direction in class or stare a little too intently at him when it’s his turn in the flight simulator. (Not like Keith’d ever know, spending all his time almost pointedly ignoring him.) There was just something about his perpetual determination, his focus, even his silence that was so–Lance didn’t know. He had absolutely no idea. Lance had spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out what made Keith Kogane so captivating, trying to convince himself he never thought about Keith Kogane, then realizing the inherent paradox in that logic and starting the cycle over again. And Keith had that kind of effect on _ Lance _ , someone who hated his guts. Lance couldn’t imagine what any idiot who liked him had to go through.

 

“What do you think his soulmark is?” Lance heard himself say, still looking in the direction Keith had gone.

 

“And why was he even looking for yours in the first place?” Hunk wondered aloud.

 

“Who cares?” Pidge threw an arm around Lance and Hunk’s shoulders. Considering how short they were, it was an impressive feat. Lance suspected witchcraft. “You just said you don’t care about him. So forget about whatever he’s doing or thinking. It’s not like you’ll ever have to interact with him.”

 

“Huh.” Lance tilted his head. “Yeah, I guess so.”

 

“Did you see how he just acted? I know so.”

 

Lance let out a sigh of relief.

 

“You know what?” He declared. “You’re right. I’m not going to let Keith Kogane get to me. I’m not going to think about it. Because we are never, ever going to matter to each other ever again.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, shit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

“So we’re going to want to attack the fleet from the left if we want an opening to approach the Yellow Lion,” says the space princess pointing at a hologram of a sentient robot cat.

“Okay,” Lance says.

“If we attack quickly and precisely, you could hold off the soldiers long enough for Hunk to find Yellow and provide support, but ideally you ought to err on the side of evasion rather than offensive action until then,” she says. 

“Cool,” Lance says.

The princess–Allura, Lance reminds himself–tilts her head. “Did you understand any of that?”

Lance nods. “No.”

Allura sighs.

And Lance feels terrible about it. He really is trying. But it’s not like he can just flip a switch in his brain and suddenly feel normal as easily as Allura can just look at five idiots and decide they’re the new defenders of the universe. A lot has happened. It’s been a long day. 

In some ways, Lance isn’t even entirely convinced that he’s not having an elaborate fever dream. Because epic intergalactic battles with five lions that fuse into robots is one thing, countless sci-fi movies have prepared Lance for this possibility, but the fact that the people piloting those lions happen to be his best friends, his idol, and his rival is almost too great a coincidence to buy. Not to mention of all the things for his mind to invent, fighting a space war against aliens alongside a beautiful princess and a guy with a great moustache seems exactly like the kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy he’d create for himself.

But, no, that couldn’t be right. Because one, if this were really his dream world, his soulmark would’ve transformed into some other name, and that hasn’t happened; Lance had checked to be sure. And two, Keith fucking Kogane wouldn’t be here. 

That thought is Lance’s lone, tenuous anchor to reality, because any escapist fantasy of his would also be an escape from Keith, and this experience has forced them together more than years worth of time at the Garrison had. Lance can’t believe he used to be offended that Keith seemed to be avoiding him before, now that he was getting a taste of all the biting insults and glares he’d been missing out on. 

He wasn’t hurt that Keith didn’t even remember him. In fact, Lance can convince himself, almost successfully, he must’ve been faking it, on the basis that you don’t just forget the kid with the alien tattoo, even if you are as above everything as Keith Kogane. 

Keith hasn’t mentioned it so far, hasn’t seemed to acknowledge him in any way as the kid who couldn’t cover his soulmark properly even when his wrist was a bigger development in xenoarchaeology than the Roswell incident. (Pidge had made him learn the word xenoarchaeology. And every detail of the Roswell incident. At the time it’d seemed like pointless nerd babble, but given his current circumstances, he’s starting to doubt that.) Sure, it’d be a weird point for Keith to bring up out of the blue, but Lance figures if Keith wanted to bring it up he would’ve found a way to do it by now. It’s possible that he could just be figuring out the best way to do it. Sometimes Lance will catch Keith staring at him like he’s a riddle that needs to be solved and Lance thinks he’s going to say something about it, but Keith always ends up looking away like nothing ever happened. Still, considering how blunt Keith usually is, Lance figures it couldn’t be about his soulmark. Maybe Keith’s just trying to figure out why Lance is such an idiot. Lance had definitely been trying to figure that one out himself for quite some time. 

And, speaking of his soulmark, apparently there were good aliens. Allura was good, not to mention gorgeous space royalty. It was almost too much for Lance to consider after a lifetime of being afraid of his soulmate, but maybe there was a chance that–

“Paladin,” Allura says sharply, snapping him out of his thoughts.

“Um.” Lance winces. “Yeah?”

“Did you understand this time?” Allura asks, eyes bright and expectant.

Lance groans. He could kick himself right now. Forget the Galra, he could literally fly the Blue Lion into the furthest reaches of space and eject himself into the void right now. 

Lance braces himself for Allura’s wrath, but instead she waves her hand through the hologram, dissipating the plans laid out before them.

“I know this must be a lot for you to process at once,” she says.

“I’m sure you know the feeling,” Lance mumbles. “What with–”

He waves his hands in the air hopelessly, trying to figure out how to say “the passage of 10,000 years and the destruction of people and civilization” in a way that feels natural.

“–everything you’ve had to deal with too,” he settles on lamely. “You’re really brave to take charge so fast right after that. I mean it.”

“I wouldn’t describe it as brave.” Allura smiles, but the expression feels hollow. 

Lance is truly struck, for the first time, with the fact that Allura was a kid, almost his age. 

“I think we’ve gone over the plan of attack as many times as needed,” she says abruptly, turning around and reactivating the holograms. “You’ve gathered as much of it as you could, blue paladin, at this point in time it may be best to do your best with what you have.”

“Wing it. Got it.” Lance snorts. “You know, maybe I should’ve been in Red. ‘Impulsive’ is kind of my thing.”

“Being impulsive and being unprepared are hardly the same,” Allura corrects, but her tone is light, almost teasing. 

“What’s so great about Keith?” Lance blurts. “Why is no matter what he does he’s always better than–”

Lance blushes and snaps his mouth shut. He doesn’t care about Keith. Why would he? He doesn’t. 

Allura is maybe the only person on the entire ship who’ll buy that at this point, and Lance really doesn’t want to screw that up.

Allura frowns. Lance hates himself for how concerned she looks, like despite the pressing threat of Galra attack and own overwhelming grief she’d drop everything to help him work through his stupid teen angst. Lance can see how, in an Altea unravaged by war and destruction, she would’ve been a good leader. 

“I mean, man, he’s just really lucky, huh,” Lance says awkwardly, swallowing. “It’s–good that–he’s on our side.”

Allura furrows her brow. “...Indeed.” 

The implied question in her tone is so blatant that it’s almost a command to keep speaking. Lance pretends not to notice. He’s already clearly established he’s an idiot, so he she could believe it. 

He fixes his eyes on a corner of the digital battle plans, hoping that if he doesn’t make eye contact the moment will pass. The hologram is more intricate than Lance had realized from his first glance. Looking closer, Lance can see images and text underneath the beneath the main map of the mine, designs of Galra armor and pictures of blurry terrain and–

Lance freezes. “What’s that.”

“This?” Allura blinks and tries to follow Lance’s gaze. “The coordinates?”

“The–word, above the coordinates,” Lance clarifies. “What’s that.”

“The name of the base we’re attacking?” Allura says. “I never thought to mention it, since you wouldn’t be able to read Galran regardless, but–”

The sentence of Allura’s sentence is drowned out by an oppressive silence ringing in Lance’s ears, sending every thought in his mind skittering away in a second. He replays the word in his mind over and over–Galran, Galran, Galran–but nothing changes. He is still in this moment, standing stock still, suddenly feeling like his wrist is burning underneath the leather band pressing tightly on his veins.

Lance almost feels ridiculous for daring to hope, for believing that just because there were good aliens doesn’t mean he would deserve one of them. He’s grateful that the universe didn’t let him delude himself for long, gave him a sign early to save him the disappointment. His soulmate, Lance thinks distantly, has incredibly formal handwriting, because the letters are almost identical in style to the ones hovering before him. One character is almost exactly the same, three slashes slanting downward with a perfect line through the middle. His soulmate must’ve been someone who’s had to actively study and perfect their signature, because it’s undeniable, the similarities between the characters printed above the numbered coordinates and the writing on his wrist. 

It was naive to doubt his fate like that. He knows what’s waiting for him. He is Lance McClain. 

Galran. Galran, he thinks to himself, the thoughts echoing through his brain without sinking in. The enemies of the universe are the Galran. The people who destroyed Allura’s home planet are Galran. 

My soulmate, Lance thinks, is Galran.


End file.
